Thirty-Two

“Your room,” said one of the officers. “You take us there now. We search.”

He took her arm. She pulled away. “Search for what? Do you have a warrant?”

Oh, silly American. Such ignorance might have been expected from a tourist, not from her. Lola knew that people who complained about the American criminal justice system had plenty of justification, but sometimes, just once in a while, she wished the naysayers could see what she’d seen in those faraway places where notions of “justice” made an overlong jail stay while awaiting trial, or aggressive racial profiling, look almost quaintly gentle in comparison to middle-of-the-night disappearances, confessions achieved by electric shock and near-drownings, and executions barely disguised as suicides.

But the members of the Vietnam People’s Public Security, in their green uniforms with the scarlet epaulets, didn’t even respond to her ridiculous questions, brushing past her toward the sardine tin that masqueraded as an elevator. There were four of them. Lola considered what the ride to the fourth floor might be like, all of them pressed against one another. “I’ll walk.”

“We walk, too.” They trooped up the stairs with her, two in front, two behind, making Lola glad she’d never gotten around to getting that skirt. By the time they reached her fourth-floor room, she was sweating—again. They weren’t. She fumbled around in her pockets for her key, but the lead officer opened the door with one furnished by the manager. When Lola tried to accompany him inside, he held up a peremptory hand. “You stay.”

She watched from the hall, helpless, as the men tossed the room with quick, practiced motions, yanking the sheets, coverlet, and mattress pad from the bed, upending the mattress, and running their hands around it seeking openings. Satisfied, they flung the bedding into a corner and dropped the mattress back into place, dumping the contents of the drawers, her duffel, and her Dopp kit upon it. They ran their hands beneath the dressers, the end tables, the sink. They lifted the lid from the toilet and peered inside. An officer held out his hand for her bookbag. When she hesitated, he jerked it from her shoulder, unzipped its various pockets, and shook it out over the desk. Her new sandals tumbled out. She prayed they wouldn’t make her remove her boots, her SIM card within rubbing against her ankle.

Maids, drawn by the commotion, gathered behind her, whispering among themselves. The bellboys soon joined them. Lola felt sorry for the desk clerk, deprived by her duties of the spectacle. When other guests began to congregate, she lost her patience.

“What are you looking for?”

The officer who appeared to be in charge whirled to face her. “The pills. Where are they?”

“I have no pills.” A deep and abiding affection for the TSA officer in Salt Lake permeated her very bones.

“You have.” He radiated certainty.

“I do not.” Lola pulled herself to her full height and glared down at him.

“You come.”

Down the stairs again, this time with the entourage from the hallway in tow. The others crowded into the hotel’s small lobby, disappointment glazing their features as the police hustled the source of their entertainment into a car and drove her away as the journalism gods, having extracted their fee for all the favors they’d bestowed, laughed and laughed.

The building was small, the room shabby. Lola figured it for a satellite office. That meant she probably wasn’t in too much trouble. Yet.

The man before her watched in silence. Lola knew this part. Charlie, in his role as sheriff, employed it with great success with first-time miscreants. “Keep quiet long enough, and they’ll tell you everything before you ask a single question.” It also worked well when Margaret went astray of the house rules. And Lola herself used it all the time in interviews.

On the other hand. The fringe of hair that showed beneath the man’s peaked cap was shot through with silver. Fine lines fanned out from his eyes, the corners of his mouth. His neck sagged over his stiff collar. He was older than she was, maybe nearing sixty, serving out his final years in an easy posting. But his age meant he’d seen the conflict they called the American War. And he’d been on the winning side. His definition of “interview” was probably a lot different that hers. Rougher. Almost certainly, he could out-wait her.

A window unit chugged behind the officer, steadily dripping water into a plastic basin set beneath it. The room was not stifling. Nor was it cool. Lola wanted her hotel room, with its cold shower and icy air conditioning. Maybe it was the thought of the AC, but another chill swept through her. Best to get this part over with. She jumped in.

“Why am I here?”

“You sell drugs.”

More verdict than question, delivered in the same casual tone in which he might have said, You are American.

“I do not.” Damn. Lola had already broken a cardinal rule. Never get defensive. Always attack. “Where is your proof?”

He pushed a form across the desk toward her. In Vietnamese. Lola pushed it back. “You know I can’t read this.”

“We received a telephone call. That a drug dealer with your name would be arriving here. That you would bring pills with you. Do you know what the penalty is for smuggling drugs into our country?” His English careful, precise.

Lola again pictured the TSA agent who’d so blithely tossed the baggie of pills into the trash. She’d thought she would never love again after Charlie, but at that moment, she was pretty sure that what she felt for the anonymous agent was close.

“I am not a drug dealer. I did not smuggle drugs into your country. Did you find any drugs?”

“No. Maybe you have sold them already.”

“I have not. Because I did not smuggle drugs. Who made this telephone call?”

“We do not reveal this.”

Not that he needed to. Malachi. Just like he’d made the anonymous call to Munro—at least, she’d assumed it had been Malachi—calling her a pill-popper. Only Munro knew she was in Vietnam. He must have said something to Malachi. Like father, like son. Or maybe the other way around. Both equally untrustworthy.

Lola vowed that when she got back, immediately after tracking down the TSA agent and planting a big wet kiss on his startled mouth, she’d find Malachi and … and … she’d figure that part out later. What she didn’t understand was Malachi’s motive. If the only reason he’d been selling drugs was to raise money so his friend could go to Vietnam, why was he so determined to stop her from going? Maybe his drug dealing went beyond helping a friend. Maybe the reason he’d raised so much money—beyond Lola’s contribution to his coffers—was that he already had a business going, one that she’d inadvertently stumbled across.

It had been no small feat to get his message through to a local police precinct in a foreign country. Would someone who went through that much effort also be capable of killing?

Lola thought of Munro, of the expression of love and pain that crossed his face when he looked at his son. Quashed the flash of empathy. Munro was almost certainly the reason Malachi knew where she was, and hence the reason she was in this fix.

She exhaled. She’d deal with Munro and Malachi later. First she’d have to get through this nonsense. But it wasn’t nonsense. Vietnam was good and sick of Americans both using and dealing drugs in their country, and its penalties reflected that. A hefty bribe could make a weed charge disappear, but heroin possession could bring a life sentence or even the death penalty. She wondered where pills landed on the scale.

“I do not have drugs. I have not sold drugs.” Damn. Defensive again.

“Then why are you here?”

She grasped at the most slender of straws. “I’m a journalist. I’m working on a story.”

She held her breath and counted. One … two … Maybe he wouldn’t …

No, he was reaching for her passport. Leafing through it until he found her visa. Reading it back to her.

“Tourist visa. Not press visa.” Entering the country under false pretenses wasn’t as bad as being a drug dealer. But it wasn’t good.

Lola had no choice but to tell the truth, as confusing and even suspicious as it sounded. “May I?” She pointed to her book bag, waiting for permission before searching its jumbled contents. She found one of the copies of Trang’s photo and smoothed it upon the desk. “It’s a story on this boy.”

“You look for him?”

“No.” This was the hard part. If it didn’t even make sense to her, she had no hope of explaining it to this man. She did her best. “He is a man now. Almost. He lives in the United States. He was born here. Adopted. I want to try to find the orphanage.”

His eyes narrowed. He stood. Leaned across the desk, his face level with hers.

“There is no story. You want to adopt another baby. Maybe you’re sick. Need a new heart. Or liver. You Americans drink too much.”

Lola stopped worrying about looking defensive. “No, no, no! I don’t want to adopt a baby. I have my own child. This boy. He is in trouble. I’m trying to help him.”

He straightened but remained standing. “What kind of trouble? Is he a drug dealer?”

“No. Enough with the drug dealer bullshit—wait. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. But his trouble is so much worse. They think he killed someone. An American woman.”

The officer sucked his cheeks in, no doubt imagining a sex crime. A brown man, a white woman, the sort of scenario that in America always went badly for the brown man. He sat. Lola breathed easier.

“How does finding this orphanage help?”

Even she didn’t fully understand the dead sister business. No way would the cops bite. She spread out her hands. “I don’t know. Only that it was very important for him to return to it. I think maybe someone was trying to prevent him from coming here.” She wished she could take back the damning “I think.” As a reporter, she had no business having an opinion. And she wasn’t even sure she thought Trang was innocent. But a lot of other people thought he was. She said as much.

“His friends—his American friends—believe he did not kill anyone. They are so sure.”

“What orphanage?”

“I don’t know that, either. The Nice and Gentle Orphanage. Something like that.”

So far, the man had maintained an admirable poker face. Now disgust and disbelief showed through. “You do drugs.”

Square One.

“I do not do drugs.” Drugs were needles, scarred forearms, scary neighborhoods.

“You do. You are junkie. You need fix.” He pointed to her gooseflesh-pimpled arms.

“No.” But—the nausea. The shakes. The chills. Withdrawal? She hadn’t taken that many pills, though. And she hadn’t taken them that often. This was just a garden-variety traveler’s virus. It had to be.

“You sell drugs.”

She shoved away a memory of Pioneer Park. “I have sold no drugs.” He hadn’t said anything about buying them.

“How do we know this?”

“I can account for my movements since arriving.” At least, she hoped she could. With some trepidation, she handed over the cabdriver’s card, hoping that he didn’t have any illegal business going on on the side. Even if he didn’t, a visit from the authorities, especially cops interested in prosecuting a foreigner, would make his life uncomfortable at best. She gave him her new cellphone, free of any calls but for the text to Jan, along with the receipt for the phone’s purchase, damp and crumpled from her pocket, thankful that it had a time stamp.

“That’s all I’ve done since getting here. I took a cab ride. Bought a phone. Some sandals. Pho.” She extracted the other receipts, saved by force of habit from her expense-account days as a foreign correspondent.

“You could have sold the pills on the way to buy these thing.”

Of course she could have. But she chose to disagree. “How? Your men are everywhere in the Old City.” She thought it a safe assumption that plainclothes cops prowled the most popular tourist districts, on the lookout for tourists seeking mischief as well as to protect the more clueless ones from themselves, or from those eager to prey upon them. Not only had Vietnam won the war, but it was busy accumulating as much dong as possible from the former invaders. Safety was an important ally.

The officer picked up the telephone on his desk and snapped an order. Two underlings materialized. “Take her,” he said.

At the entrance to what appeared to be the Vietnamese version of an interview room, Lola stopped. She’d learned a few things over the years. “Wait,” she said. She pointed to a door with the international symbol, a stick woman in a skirt. “Mind if I use that first?”